US political figures from left and right voiced fresh objections on Sunday to Donald Trump\u2019s provisional deal with Iran \u2013 even as the US president made new threats while Vice-President JD Vance hailed progress during the first round of direct peace talks in Switzerland.<\/p>\n
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican who recently lost<\/a> his primary battle for re-election, posted<\/a> a line on X from a Wall Street Journal article on how rogue regimes evade US economic warfare. It said: \u201cIran\u2019s ability to withstand sanctions so far exposes a hard fact for Washington: economic pressure has largely failed to cow rogue regimes, as they game out more ways to sidestep US restrictions.\u201d<\/p>\n This amplified remarks from two days ago where he said he had hoped that before striking a deal that involved releasing restricted Iranian funds that the US would have \u201cfinished the job\u201d and eliminated Iran\u2019s hostile nuclear capability, warning that \u201cnow they will use that money \u2026 to replace their ballistic missile assets and begin to enrich [uranium] again and that\u2019s going to be a continuing danger.\u201d<\/p>\n On Sunday morning senior Democratic figure Susan Rice, a domestic policy aide to Joe Biden and former US ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser under Barack Obama, added to her recent description of the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the US and Iran as a \u201cjaw dropping, horrific surrender\u201d by Trump, by calling it \u201cflimsy\u201d and \u201cegregious\u201d because \u201cso many concessions were granted up front\u201d.<\/p>\n Rice told ABC News This Week that the concessions to Iran in the MOU, signed by<\/a> Trump in Paris last Wednesday, \u201cwouldn\u2019t normally be, and shouldn\u2019t have been, granted until after there was not only a fully comprehensive deal to, at least, deal with their nuclear program, but also that those provisions that were negotiated had been agreed\u201d.<\/p>\n Rice pointed to a provision in the document that, chiming with Cornyn\u2019s remarks, showed Iran \u201cis now able to sell all of its oil and all of its oil products on the market unimpeded, and use that money to rebuild itself\u201d ahead of any agreement on the nuclear issue.<\/p>\n The bipartisan criticism came as Trump threatened<\/a> to renew military attacks on Iran if it didn\u2019t cooperate and rein in its proxy<\/a> in Lebanon, Hezbollah, including a forcible takeover by the US of control of the strait of Hormuz<\/a> shipping channel.<\/p>\n Rice said the previous deal with Iran negotiated by Obama when he was president and then scrapped by Trump during his first term did not lift sanctions on Iran until there was full agreement on a deal, not just an MOU prior to a full pact.<\/p>\n Rice also said that Obama\u2019s condition for Iran having access to frozen assets was that they could only be spent for humanitarian purposes, while under the Trump MOU is unrestricted.<\/p>\n The New York Post tabloid, owned by the Trump-boosting Rupert Murdoch, published a withering editorial<\/a> using the glaring headline: \u201cWith Strait of Hormuz held hostage, Trump\u2019s Iran deal is worse than Obama\u2019s\u201d.<\/p>\n Rice\u2019s comments came as Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, rejected an invitation to offer Trump credit for ending the war<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s like literally an arsonist starting a fire and getting credit for running out of the burning building. This president has led this nation into a disaster. We have surrendered our power,\u201d Booker told NBC\u2019s Meet the Press. \u201cWe have capitulated to the enemy. And they now are mocking us\u201d.<\/p>\n Booker said that under the memorandum of understanding \u201cIran gets all of the benefits, literally billions and billions of dollars\u201d and called it \u201can abject surrender\u201d.<\/p>\n As the first round of face-to-face US-Iran talks in Lake Lucerne in Switzerland wrapped up late on Sunday morning, Vance said that negotiators had \u201calready made great progress over just the last few hours, and I expect that we\u2019ll make additional progress in the hours to come\u201d.<\/p>\n